August 1, 2011

So it’s been a good few months since I’ve touched this blog and plenty has happened since then..I went to Nepal..and ended up staying for 3 months. Taught English in a government school in the village of Ghandruk in the Annapurna region. Trekked during monsoon season whilst being drenched by heavy downpours and sucked by relentless leeches. Experienced the suffocating commotion of Asan tole, Kathmandu on a Saturday evening and got my luggage lost by my airline in Mumbai on the way home (no worries, I got it back 3 days later).

Back in Auckland now and a few updates..firstly my Beautiful Bones collection is now for sale on Spoonflower.

Secondly, I’ll be relocating to my new personal design-based website where I’ll be sharing heaps more ideas, images and inspiration.

November 24, 2010

Beautiful Bones is a digitally printed textile collection designed by Jessica Soon.

Capturing the celebration of the richness of life, this textile collection is inspired by the vibrancy of Mexican Dia de los Muertos (Day of the dead) festivities and the whimsical folk-art of Alfonso Castillo Orta.

As an amalgamation of digital printing and freehand machine embroidery, Beautiful bones pays homage to artisanal tradition and embraces the balance between machine vs. hand-made.

Creative processes involve hand-drawing repeat patterns, digital manipulation through Photoshop, fabric printing with internet-based company Spoonflower, then re-working designs using machine embroidery to add the final heightened level of detail.

November 22, 2010

AgResearch, a New Zealand agricultural research & design organisation, are best known in the fashion industry for developing revolutionary and innovative textiles for the commercial sector. Every year they collaborate with some NZ fashion designers, who each create a capsule collection using 4 profiled fabrics and put on a runway show at Fashion Week.

One of the most exciting things I experienced this year was watching some of my work on the runway. I had been interning with Stitch Ministry, and developed a macramé backpiece prototype that went into production during the middle of this year. The model comes in at 6:21.

October 27, 2010

Uni’s been taking over my life lately, I’ve been pretty much spending all my time in studio with the onslaught of presentations and tight deadlines at the moment. Just wanted to share some cool stuff that’s been going on, first off my work is going to be featured at the AD10 (Art+Design) Festival put on by AUT School of Art+Design from the 11-14 November 2010.

The FINZ website has also gone live so a few of the entries I’ve written as a featured blogger are up if you want to have a look.

Will be updating with content here and there more regularly I hope – still have to fill in all the exciting things that have happened (Spoonflower fabrics, interviews, Fashion Week etc.) so stay tuned.

Not to mention my Business + Design lecture with lisa lloyd taylor and guest speaker James Percy yesterday opened up a whole ‘nother can of worms…now not only am I stressing out over my collection, but also the associated collateral (i.e. logo, business cards, website, registering domain name, photography, lookbooks and more). This sort of stuff will be needed closer to the AUT exhibition/art & design festival/Rookie show dates in mid-November, rather than October though.

It’s less than 4weeks till my textile collection is due, I’ve still got bucketloads to do. I’ve finalised my 5 designs, now it’s down to sussing colours/colourways and *hopefully* some time for trialing different fabrics before sending my final order in as printing turn around will be 10-11days.

And because new FINZ website is up, you should check out my posts – I’ve been writing stuff as a student guest blogger, along with my good friend Sarah.

Fashion Industry New Zealand: The Voice of New Zealand's Fashion and Apparel Industry

August 27, 2010

June 21, 2010

Tomorrow I hand in my major project, on which I’ve been diligently working on for the past three and a half months. It is the reason this blog is so bereft of posts and malnourished (for lack of a better word). We have a presentation tomorrow at 1pm and I’m not too nervous. Reasons being: a) I’m confident in my preparation of my speech and powerpoint and b) We are only presenting to two or three tutors plus some textile students (first and second year, will be a good chance for them to score a few tips and see what we’re doing) and possibly a few third year fashion namely knitwear students whom we share a studio space with.